Leashing a tornado and living to blog about it

Why My Rottweiler Let My Pomeranian Beat Her Up – and Other Important Questions

Blog statistics aren’t something I delve into very often. They usually make me feel icky inside. Numbers have always had that effect on me, really. Ever since I entered ninth grade and encountered trigonometry. And graphs.

Naaaasty. Wasn’t math so much nicer before all that crap? When all one had to do was find the value of x?

Because it’s been a self-esteem-kicking week, I decided I may as well pummel myself down further and dust off the ol’ Google Analytics. Maybe I just needed an excuse to pour myself another glass of wine, I am not sure. Regardless, I logged in and immediately became immersed. It wasn’t the statistics themselves that grabbed my attention, though. I really still could care less about those. It was the common search terms.

Hilarious stuff, truly. If you haven’t checked out yours lately, I highly recommend it for a giggle.

Most of the top ten items on the list made sense. A lot of “rescued insanitys”, “heart dogs”, and “what to buy before getting a dogs.” It stunned me that according to Google the top search term for my website is actually “Rottweilers” and by an enourmous margin. It is something like thirty percent! To this day my most popular post ever written was the one in which I admitted to an instinctive, yet embarrassing fear, of the breed. I hope this means my shame-faced confessions have helped other people conquer their own demons.

Yep, focusing on the positive today.

Many of the other search terms were not nearly so logical. I thought I would share some of the ones that had me raising an eyebrow. The title of this post being number one, here are some of the others on the list:

“Empty bread bag” – This makes me a little sad, actually. I hope these people were able to find some cheer through my silly stories, despite their lack of bread.

“Pimp outfit” – I am sure most of these people were sorely disappointed.

“Cats are evil” – Egads! No! Cats are AWESOME! Awesome, I tell you! Pay no attention to the cat plotting my demise in the shadows…

“Name a breed of dog a man would be embarrassed to admit he’s afraid of” – This is a judgment-free zone. You will not be mocked for your fear of Yorkies here. I promise.

“Picture of elephant’s front feet” – Did you find what you came for? If you didn’t here you go:

35 thoughts on “Why My Rottweiler Let My Pomeranian Beat Her Up – and Other Important Questions”

I haven’t used Google Analytics before. I just took a quick look at the site. Very user unfriendly! It looks like a lot of work to get it going. I guess all my good search terms will just have to remain a mystery 🙂

Hi Taryn, Google Analytics may be confusing at first, but it contains a wealth of valuable information about your website traffic.

To find the search terms that brought visitors to your site, go to the left sidebar on Google Analytics, Traffic Sources => Overview => Search Engine Optimization => Queries. You can see the search terms people use to arrive at your site. This can be handy for keyword research.

Why on earth would someone be googling about someone loving themselves and not to say they love the searcher?? I’m highly confused by what people will search for. Oh well, I guess it takes a good number of nutters to make this world of ours interesting 😀

Wow, I’ve been searching the wrong terms. This is my first time arriving at your site and I found it through Facebook.

I love your list of terms. Isn’t it amazing how people end up at sites? I will admit, sometimes search results show me completely unrelated articles and I click on them anyway because they look far more interesting than what I was searching for in the first place.

I will definitely take a peek at my analytics. This may be good fodder for an article at The Wonder of Tech!

Thanks for the laugh Kristine! Oh, you had me cracking up over here. I love the bread one, I hope those people were ale to find some bread:)
I have had some crazy ones recently, real santa claus, concussion chart, licking my mothers shoes stories? WTH is up with that? creepy stares. Makes me think what kind of people I’m attracting! lol!

Hahahahahahaha!! Yes, those search terms can be a source of endless amusement, can’t they?

Top of my chart at the moment is ‘Christmas Earrings’ for some reason, and it continues at the top despite the fact that Christmas is long gone. But the most amusing, persistent – and puzzling – search term is not suited to polite company and I’m not sure how you feel about such bluntness in your comments. So let’s just say it is two words and pairs a young lady with an inappropriate body part. And since it appeared, several years ago, it continues to hover somewhere in the middle of my top twenty search terms in Firestats.

I have three that amuse me. Number one is “Ryan Gosling with his shirt off” (because I once posted an off-topic picture of that), but hey, apparently that gets people onto your blog!).

Another is “Michelle Bridges lentil shepherd pie”. Now Ms Bridges is Australia’s Jillian Carmichael and I have posted ONE diet recipe on an otherwise cake-loving blog, and THIS gets all the hits. D’oh! Imagine the disappointment of the person clicking through.

Another is “Tiny Little Emo”. I wrote a post about making those Already Been Chewed gingerbread men and said next time I would decorate them like emos (because they were sad about their missing limbs), but why people are Googling that term I cannot say!

I guess my search terms make sense but it’s still really interesting to see how people find you.

This post is inspiring! I have Google analytics and every once in awhile I open it and go “Hmmm.” I am pretty sure I bookmarked something between 2008 and 2010 about how to read it. I think I will try to find that so I get it! Thanks.

I haven’t looked in a long time but I know there are always some hysterical and improbable ones. I try to keep away from porn and swear words for the same reason. A lot of people looking for britney spears end up at LLDOL because I once used a picture of her with an orange tan. Go figure.

I’ve been using Statcounter for a year or more, and throw an eyeball on Blogger’s stats as well, to compare. It’s interesting to see the differences between the services, and I wonder what causes the discrepancies.

Let’s see, the latest word salad keyword search that brought somebody to The Elka Almanac was “alarm a gummy bears hello my gummy bear”. I can’t say as I know what exactly that person was after. Most of the time I get things like “Doberman colors” “Mean Doberman” and “Resident Evil Dog”.

Mine are mostly ones that make sense. The most common one that I get, which is rather hilarious, is “cow butts”. After all the “my life with flyball dogs” and various permutations of that, cow butts are the most common reason people click on my blog.

Same with Taryn above, I find G.A. to be so user unfriendly. (The first time I looked at it, it said I’d only had 2 visits to my site that day, but I’d had like 6 people come and leave comments that day, so I was uber confused and never went back.)

But… luckily I can still see some crazy searches just on my Blogger stats page – this one almost always turns up: “crazy ass neighbors”. You write ONE post about seeing your crazy neighbor’s naked ass up on his roof….

LMAO! I love these!
I love looking at my stats list when it comes to this topics area. I find it strange that for the past two weeks my blog numbers have been boosted by a Jimmy Kimmel video that he shared of a Mastiff and a Chihuahua. I think it is interesting that pitull is the number one search term that brings people to my site. How often do I write about pitbulls? And, “Doges eating underwear” is always in the top 5 on my blog. Go figure.
I think I like your list better! 🙂

I was sent here by A.J. and she was right, it was hysterical! My fave is: “If my dog shits in the woods do I have to pick it up?” Duh – that’s like asking: “Do I really have to flush a public toilet?” Yes – and you shouldn’t have to ask!